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(Banana, I was gonna call you evil, now I am calling you, steve, king, pow, me and everyone else evil.)

Originally Posted by Binky

The guy's in critical condition I believe, the bull was almost certainly killed.

Incidentally, not all bullfighting is potentially fatal, as I recall, the Basque-Navarre style just involves a big staff and pole vaulting over the bull, with points for acrobatics and how dangerous things were, no harm is actually done to the bull or (Ideally) to the bullfighters.

Originally Posted by redstrife

Ah Looney Tunes ...

Although the bull ... "made his point", I'm sure he was put down. So in the end, the bull loses.

What happens is that another Matador, goes in and finishes the bull off instead. As you may realise from the picture the bull is bleeding heavily from just around its neck area.

Well here is a quick explanation of what I have seen involved in the bull fights.

First some clown like Matadors, prat about with the new bull that is released into the stadium and get it to chase them. They have safe zones near the sides where they hide and the next clown like Matadors starts baiting the bull and the bull leaves the first clown like Matadors and chases the second who is now waving the cloth at it. They do this to get a idea of the bulls temperament.

Then some knight like dude in heavy armour arrives on top a horse that is also heavily armoured. He then goes about getting the bull the charge at the horses side and when it does he rams it with a spear just behind the neck area (this is to soften the area for the main Matador to do the final kill).

Then he goes off after a few good stabs and 2-3, I would say semi-matadors arrive (not the big show but up and coming dudes) they then get the bull to charge at them, with no cloth by the way, whilst holding 2 dagger like objects at the end of sticks and then when the bull drops its head to jam its horns up the semi-matador guts, the semi-matador jumps to the side and hits it with the daggers in the same location as the knight dude on the horse. They do this for a while, you can seen at this stage the bull loosing blood quite badly as it has been running and its heart pumping heavily.

Now the big show Matador arrives, gets the bull to 'dance' with him whilst using the cloth that we see most the time in pictures and movies, the bull is now quite tired, if he did this at the beginning the bull would own him as it would not have lost so much blood and energy.

The bull is now seriously tired, drained of blood and is not really moving freely, most just stand there still. He then signals to the crowd that its time for the kill and they all get cheer and touch themselves (okay they don't really touch themselves), he then is handed a slim sword, much like zorros.

He approaches the bull from the front with a cloth to help lower the bulls head, some don't have the cloth, just him and the bull, this is because the angle to the bulls heart from the wound can only be reached from directly in front of the bull.

The Matador then jumps in and stabs the bull, then jumps to the side when the bull lurches out one last time (our dude was not so good). The bull now falls on its front feet in a kind of bowing position and the crowd get really turned on by this. The Matador finally gets a small dagger and jams it into the bulls spinal cord and the kill is complete.

If the crowd are pleased they start waving their white handkerchiefs and saying stuff in Spanish.

Then the bull is dragged off by the knight dude and a few minutes later another bull arrives and the battle begins again.

M-O-R-T-A-L-C-O-M-B-A-T!

p.s. on a side note: I saw a documentary on how these bulls are bread and made ready for the contest and I will say, they are looked after very very well and the guy I saw who bread them (think he was No.1 breeder) was quite upset whenever his bulls where taken away.

p.s. on a side note: I saw a documentary on how these bulls are bread and made ready for the contest and I will say, they are looked after very very well and the guy I saw who bread them (think he was No.1 breeder) was quite upset whenever his bulls where taken away.

It's still not justified
whether we take care of them or not, we're still at a barbaric level when it comes to entertaining ourselves.